As their fourth season rolled into a successful close ratings-wise this week (with Sunday’s episode “A” drawing in 15.68m viewers), zombie drama series The Walking Dead are already looking ahead not only to a fifth season, but also to a spinoff show, according to the franchise’s original creator.

Robert Kirkman, the man behind the comic book that introduced the world to The Walking Dead brand in 2003, has been recruited to work alongside writer/producer Dave Erickson (best known for his work on Sons of Anarchy) in the proposed spinoff.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, he said of the upcoming partnership: “I have been a huge fan of Dave Erickson for many, many years. He was the best possible guy for the job and I’m very excited about this idea of doing this companion show for The Walking Dead.”

The untitled spinoff show for AMC was originally announced in September 2013 at the start of the main series’ fourth run, with promises that there will be key alterations between the two formats, the new show taking on ‘different new angles’ and being able to portray ‘new kind[s] of stories’, as Kirkman at the time summarised: “I think people are going to be pretty taken aback by how cool this companion show can be.”

More recently, the concept has also been described by Kirkman as ‘exciting’, ‘unique’, and ‘stand-alone’. Whether those qualities (some easier to fulfill than others) will be able to be represented remains to be seen, though a more stable viewpoint will be that of the ‘main’ version, which will retain familiarity in unpredictability whilst attempting to step up a level in areas such as action scenes.

The Walking Dead‘s returning showrunner Scott Gimple, who will oversee the run premiering later this year, yesterday said of what viewers can expect from season 5: “I would say that these next eight episodes are going to be a little more action-heavy, with a lot of big twists. Really 85% of [the survivors] are together again, so it’s a pretty good guess that they’re going to remain together and that’s going to give us a whole new emotional dynamic as well.”

While it may have a more stable platform from which to build, the fifth season of The Walking Dead will still have a reputation to maintain when it comes on-air, though like it’s spin-off it will not be for a while yet, so fans of the show wishing to tide themselves over will just have to make do with reliving the most recent installments, as trailered below. Viewing the franchise through a highly-successful alternate platform is also an option…